...after Apple announced they were sun-setting MAC address Wi-Fi triangulation (which was the indoor positioning technique Aruba/Meridian relied on at the time), the two companies decided to adopt new Apple iBeacon standards and build their own beacons so they could control their system more thoroughly.

CurrentC allows me to expose all of my personal information to retailers so they can use it as they please! I love the ease of use of opening up my spending habits to retailers with no concern for my privacy.
Future feature requests-
* Please tie in my store Wi-Fi and location data so you can track every aspect of me in your store.
* Please sell my data to your CurrentC partners
* Better yet, sell my spending habits to junk mail companies -- I love unsolicited mail
* Allow me to upload all of my contacts to your database so you can share all of your high-value brand recognition with my friends and family
* I would like to see very large web ads within your app since I now have a larger phone screen size.
* On occasion leak your cloud data about me to others to expose my details to as many other businesses and enterprising programmers in foreign lands.
* Add a few more steps to the process of using the app for payment so I further enjoy the time it takes to stand at a check out line in a store.

iOS 8 Wi-Fi Changes - A Privacy Win? Or iBeacon Lock-in?

Before iOS 8, when an iPhone scans for nearby Wi-Fi, it transmits its unique MAC address as part of the search. Watching for MAC addresses is one of the techniques that is used to locate devices in retail settings.

A new change in iOS 8 makes it so that when a phone is scanning for nearby Wi-Fi access points, it will use a random MAC address rather than announcing the device's permanent address.

However there is another explanation for this change, and one that makes more sense from a business perspective.

By disabling the ability for third-party companies to track devices using the MAC address, this ensures the only way to track devices indoors is by using iBeacon technology.

So while this is a positive change from a privacy perspective, really it's just a way to ensure mobile marketing firms are required to use Apple's iBeacon technology and are further locked into Apple's ecosystem.

Airplane Time! Stretch time while flying

Today in the middle of the flight from Portland to Amsterdam, I was unsatisfied with merely knowing what time it was in Portland and in Amsterdam. Instead, I wanted to know what time it effectively was in the airplane as I was flying, taking in to account the stretching of time by flying.

My theory is by looking at "airplane time" and ignoring the origin and destination times completely, it may be easier to adjust to a new timezone since you won't have to trick yourself into ignoring your other clocks.

So, on the flight, I put together an iOS app to show the local "airplane time" while on a plane traveling across many timezones.

Example

Say you leave Portland at 1:30pm with a scheduled arrival time of 8:30am in Amsterdam. The app calculates a "local airplane time" based on the departure and arrival times and timezones. At the beginning of the flight, airplane time and Portland time are the same, but by the time you reach Amsterdam, airplane time matches the local time.

In order to accomplish this, flight-seconds must be stretched or compressed depending on which direction you're flying. When flying east, flight-seconds are shorter than real seconds, and when flying west, flight-seconds are longer.

Source Code

You can download the source code for this app on Github! Feel free to send pull requests or file issues if you find anything broken!